Creating an OpenDRIVE Model of the Campus of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics for Automotive Simulations

The development of automotive technologies requires quite a significant amount of time and money. To accelerate this procedure, the technology of now is strongly based on computer simulations, where the whole vehicle or its parts can be analyzed in a virtual environment. The behavior of cars, especially equipped with new sensors or assistants, requires long testing, where the automotive simulators can play a cardinal role. The precise vehicular tests request accurate environmental models. These new kinds of models are still standardized; one of the pioneer de facto standards is OpenDRIVE. This standard was initially defined to be able to express all elements with all potential parameters required in high precision simulations. The actual research focused on creating a compliant virtual model based on mobile mapping measurements. A Leica Pegasus Two mobile mapping system was applied to capture field data about the selected pilot area, which is the campus of Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME). The obtained Lidar point cloud was georeferenced; the merged point cloud is tailored to the driven trajectory, and then it has been evaluated manually. The acquired land use map is converted – similarly manually – into basic road geometry elements: straight lane and bended lane segments. These objects are finally compiled into an XML format, which is compliant with the OpenDRIVE standard. The achieved virtual model has been tested in Driving Scenario Designer of Mathworks Matlab; however, it is promptly ready for use in other widely applied automotive simulators.